Hunting deer, 15C Illuminated Manuscript
In the Middle Ages, hunting was an activity for elites. Hunting was the privilege of the nobility, closely linked to land ownership. When agriculture emerged in the Neolithic era, active livestock farming relegated hunting to a secondary role. Hunting became primarily a defensive practice aimed at protecting farmers’ crops from hungry or destructive wild animals. While crops & livestock farming covered people’s basic dietary needs, hunting offered a wider choice of meat to the privileged classes. Noblemen performed necessary management of their lands & the peasants in their employ. They raised funding for military expeditions & social events, practiced horseback riding, hunting, & hawking. Hunting had a dual symbolic & social significance. Being invited to hunt with the King was one of the court’s great honors. In Europe, laws were devised to regulate hunting on royal territory. The elites could show off their abilities as warriors through hunting. More than a pastime, it was an important arena for social interaction, essential training for war, & a gauge of nobility. Local lords maintained & monopolized the gameparks & the taking of big game in forest reserves & small game in warrens. These large sanctuaries of woodland—essentially the royal forest—where populations of game animals were kept & watched over by gamekeepers. Here the peasantry could not hunt, poaching being subject to severe punishment. The lower classes mostly had to content themselves with snaring birds & smaller game outside of forest reserves & warrens. By the 16C, most areas of land reserved for hunting of game were of 3 kinds, according to their degree of enclosure & being subject to Forest Laws: Forests, large unenclosed areas of wilderness; Chases, which normally belonged to nobles rather than the crown; & Parks, which were enclosed & not subject to Forest Laws.
Piero de' Crescenzi (1233-1321) wrote of Hunting in Book 10 of his Liber ruralium commodorum 1304-09. He advised that the gamepark should be stocked with hare, roe deer, red deer, wild boar, rabbits. He recommended the English, French, & Spanish hare specifically. He wrote of hunting dogs & their dietary recommendations for each season & even times of the day to feed them. Those participating in "the hunt" lived with unique vocabularies, customs, & ancient rituals.
See
Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within. Animals in the Middle Ages (New York, 1994).
Chasse L.-J. Bord and J.-P. Mugg, La chasse au Moyen Age. Occident latin, Ve–XVe siècle (Paris, 2008).
Robert Delort, Le commerce des fourrures en Occident à la fin du Moyen Age ,2 vols. (Rome, 1978).
HH J. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk. The Art of Medieval Hunting (London, 2001).
Hunting A. Smets and B. V an den Abeele, “Medieval Hunting” in Animals in the Medieval Age (Oxford, 2011).
Hannele Klemettilä, Animals and Hunters in the Late Middle Ages (Routledge, 2015)
Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game , ed. W. Baillie-Grohman and F. Baillie-Grohman (Philadelphia, 2005).
MH R. Almond, Medieval Hunting (Phoenix Mill, 2003).
Poétique A. Strubel and C. de Saulnier, La poétique de la chasse au Moyen Age: Les livres de chasse du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1994).
